lf her heart was
broken, fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. She slept
heavily customarily but to-night her rest was fitful and troubled. She
kept dreaming strange dreams that caused her to twitch in her sleep and
give queer little cries of distress and moans of fretfulness.
Sometimes she seemed to be trying to overtake something that was
constantly eluding her. First it was a long, lank creature with
piercing eyes and a knob at the back of its head which it seemed to be
Nan's duty, not to say pleasure, to shoot off with a paper of needles.
Then it was something she must recollect or be put to death for
forgetting; some awful harangue that she had been doomed to deliver
before Delia and a vast crowd of other people, all of whom were staring
at her regretfully and murmuring to one another that it was a shame
such a hoyden should be allowed to live; and again it was some dainty
little creature with tender eyes and shining hair that Nan longed to
follow but could not because of something inside her breast that held
her back and would not let her call.

Miss Blake did not go to her room until very late. She and Delia kept
up a steady stream of conversation until long after midnight, and even
then the governess would not have paused if Delia had not been struck
with sudden compunction.

"Dear heart alive!" she cried, scrambling to her feet hastily as the
clock chimed twelve. "Here you've been wore out with tiredness and
excitement and I keep you up till all hours pressin' you with questions
that you ain't fit to answer, just as if we wouldn't have time an' to
spare together for the rest of our lives, please Heaven! Now go to
bed, dearie, so you'll be all rested and fresh in the morning."

Miss Blake shook her head. "No, not all the rest of our lives
together, Delia," she cried, hurriedly; "it can only be for a year at
most. You said it would be a year, didn't you? Well, then, you know I
could not stay after that."

"Go to bed, dearie," was Delia's sole response. "And may you sleep
easy and have no dreams."

She took her upstairs herself, just as if the governess had been a
little girl; and was not satisfied until she had brushed out the masses
of shining hair and woven them into a long, ruddy braid behind. Then
she smoothed the pillow lovingly and with another hearty "sleep well"
went down stairs to "do up" her dishes and get the house closed for the
night.

When she finally stole up to her